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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669500">the one where Tony still doesn’t want to rule the world</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinequanon/pseuds/sinequanon'>sinequanon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tiny avengers [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Eventual Supreme Overlord Tony Stark, M/M, Reluctant Supreme Overlord Tony Stark, Team as Family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:35:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,614</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinequanon/pseuds/sinequanon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the team's private island, possible-doll-army vacation, the Avengers return to the Tower with some new friends in tow. This goes about as well as you would expect.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Tony Stark &amp; Avengers Team</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tiny avengers [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1122018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>181</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the one where Tony still doesn’t want to rule the world</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is the sequel to story ten in this series, "the one where Tony doesn't want to rule the world". This one won't make much sense without it.</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tony was sitting in the middle of his favorite jumbo doughnut enjoying a well-earned snack when JARVIS alerted him to the potential problem.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Excuse me, Sir, but I’m afraid I must inform you that the Research and Data Collection team has decided to initiate a takeover of the town of Cape Roja, Washington.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tony tried to think of everything he knew about Cape Roja, Washington and came up with nothing. He knew of a couple of Cape Verdes and a Cape Negra somewhere in Europe, but that was all. “Why?” he asked, more curious than anything.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">JARVIS hesitated, and Tony frowned. “J?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“As you know, the dolls that returned with you have been diligently researching all aspects of Earth life that are available to them,” and yes, Tony knew that, he’d brought the group with them to start to make up for the terrible isolation that the lot of them had suffered hiding on that island for decades. “They have recently begun reading materials specifically related to the Avengers. Including you, Sir.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tony sucked the last few crumbs off of his fingers and waited for his AI to explain how reading about the Avengers led to a takeover of anything. “So?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">If JARVIS could have sighed, he surely would have. “They are very fond of you, Sir, and there are a number of people who have written less than complimentary things about you over the years. There is one blogger in Cape Roja, Washington who has been particularly vicious in his slander in recent months.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">SI had a couple of people on payroll whose job it was to track that sort of thing; if the blogger in question was potentially dangerous, Tony would have heard about it already. That didn’t explain why the dolls were revolting now, unless—“They’ve been talking to the bots again, haven’t they?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The dolls and Tony’s bots got along so well, in fact, that the RDC team had abandoned the Avengers for their new friends almost immediately, as evidenced by the fact that they were only now getting around to researching superheroes. The bots, of course, had very strong feelings about the way people talked about their creator; it was only natural that some of that had rubbed off on the dolls.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tony was halfway home before he thought to ask JARVIS exactly how the dolls planned to conquer Washington state.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“They are building a robot army, Sir. They have designated DUM-E, U, and I as line alpha; the house bots as line beta, and every other line according to their functions.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The genius startled so badly he almost flew into a flock of geese. “How many lines are there?” he asked, slightly alarmed at how quickly things seemed to be moving.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Twelve, Sir. Production has increased 118% in the last seventy-two hours.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Okay, well, let the team know, and we’ll sit everybody down and explain why defending the billionaire’s honor is unnecessary.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“The only one currently available is Captain Rogers, and I believe he may disagree with your assessment.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Steve was a little biased in that regard, that was true. “Let him know anyway, will you?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Of course, Sir.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">&lt;&gt; &lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As it turned out, Steve was not at all worried about the possibility of doll domination.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I think it’s sweet that they care about you. Besides, it’s only one town, and it’s not like it’s a big one, either.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Sure, it starts as a tiny town, and then the next thing you know, I’m suddenly responsible for everything west of the Mississippi River,” Tony opined. “Two months after that, I’ve got an entire hemisphere, and I don’t want a hemisphere, Steve!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Steve had the gall to smirk at him. “I think you’d do a fine job of running the Western hemisphere. The people at SI seem to love you, and New York certainly owes you a lot.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“That’s totally different. My employees are paid—very well, I might add—to love me, and New York just likes me ‘cause of the nuke thing.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">(Because carrying a bomb into space was something that everybody did; you know, if and when they felt like it.)</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” Steve chided, but Tony wasn’t listening.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“...and once you have one hemisphere, it’s practically impossible not to end up with the other one, and you know what happens when you’re in charge of both hemispheres, Steve? You’re the de facto ruler of the world!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Steve thought of Tasha’s notebook, and Coulson’s Timeline for Impending World Domination (with charts!) and suppressed a grin. It looked like adjustments were going to need to be made. Tony looked genuinely distressed, though, so Steve pulled him in for a kiss. “Honestly, I can’t think of a better guy to be de facto ruler of the world than you.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tony shuddered, and not for sexy reasons. “But I don’t <em>want</em> to rule the world! Pepper would kill me!” And if she didn’t, paperwork would; he was getting hives just thinking about it.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Steve kissed Tony again, just because he could. “Well, it’s not like it will happen immediately. It’s just a tiny town in Washington, right?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">&lt;&gt; &lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It was <em>not</em> just a tiny town in Washington. It started out that way, sure, but people were always sharing their opinions on Tony, and not all of them were good. Some of them were very, very bad. The people of those cities where the most vocal critics lived inexplicably found the technology in their lives much more difficult to use: wrong volume, wrong temperature, command not recognized, blue screen of death.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">If the critics kept being nuisances, they would leave for work or the store or a walk one day and then suddenly decide to go on vacation for two weeks. When they returned, they had all new hobbies and interests and couldn’t even recall the name of the man who owned Stark Industries. Then things would mostly go back to normal for the rest of the residents of those towns, and nobody ever really thought about why that was.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">&lt;&gt; &lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Technically, the first state in the new world empire was North Dakota. November weather that year was especially harsh, even by North Dakotan standards, and a massive storm brought power outages and saw Stark robots flying in to make sure people didn’t turn into giant popsicles. By the end of the month, Stark robots were managing the essential utilities for eighty percent of the state, to wide acclaim. Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and two Canadian provinces followed suit by the end of the year. When spring arrived, Tony expected the respective states and provinces to send the bots home, but every one of them lobbied to keep them. When a team of robots went to the Midwest to help manage a drought later that summer, the same thing happened there. And on it went.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">A little over a year after the Washington incident, and despite his best efforts, Tony owned most of the Western hemisphere. As promised, he was not happy about it.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Of course, I want the dolls and my bots to live happy and fulfilling lives,” he told the team one movie night, “but Pepper already warned me that I’m responsible for any states and/or countries that they acquire, and I just found out yesterday that DUM-E adopted Costa Rica last week. I can’t possibly run a country when I didn’t even realize that I adopted it, right? And what do I even know about Costa Rica, other than it has rainforests and they speak Spanish? Nothing. It’s a bad idea, and my Spanish is not that great.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Natasha and Coulson exchanged glances, and then Natasha pulled a notebook from somewhere and started writing things down.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I thought that DUM-E, U, and JARVIS were staying out of all of the world takeover stuff?” Bruce asked.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“They were, but then DUM-E saw a documentary about sloths and decided it was his job to protect them, which means it is now <em>my</em> job to protect them. How I’m supposed to do that, I don’t know,” he complained, running a greasy hand through his hair. “It’s not like I’m going to become president of Costa Rica; even if I wanted to—which I don’t—I imagine they have a citizenship requirement.” Tony reached around Steve for some popcorn and then snuggled further into the man’s side. “But even so: my kids do a great job of taking care of people, but if they help too much, then people are going to forget how to do things for themselves, and that’s a recipe for disaster. Can you imagine me being responsible for millions of people?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The rest of the team exchanged glances behind Tony’s back.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Kind of, yeah,” Natasha shrugged.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I think you’d be pretty good at it,” Bruce said.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Why stop at millions?” Clint offered. “Go big; shoot for billions. Also, when you become the Great Grand Poobah of the world, can I have a pony?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“According to our data,” Coulson piped up, ignoring Clint completely, “your leadership would lead to a rise in global GDP, a precipitous drop in crime, and the possible extinction of coffee beans within twenty years.” When Tony blanched, he added, “with careful management, we could likely prevent the last one.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tony looked to Steve for support, but his traitorous boyfriend just leaned in for a kiss.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There was a soft whirring his his right, and Tony looked over to see four of his house bots gliding down the hallway carrying a doll apiece on their backs. It was an odd sight because it looked like the dolls were wearing costumes and wait—why was that one dressed like Rasputin?</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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